Reward - Motivation and Pay

Many People associates motivation with pay. They see it as a direct link between increasing or maintaining their standard of living, buying goods to satisfy their wants and desires, and being able to afford holidays in order to alleviate role stress. When talking about motivation and pay, we need to ask ourselves a simple question that may provide an answer to whether pay is a motivator. This question is “Do we live to work, or work to live”? We can take both parts of the question and answer them separately.

Do we live to Work ?
Many people see pay as a motivator because it enables them to buy the things they want, live in the area they want and buy car that they want. Maslow said that ”humans are wanting beings; they always want more and they wants depends on what they already have”. This suggest that motivation in strongly linked to pay because, in many cases, the harder we work (such as overtime), the more reward we get (in terms of money), the more we have available to spend (disposable income)
However, Herzberg stated that money is not a motivator, but a hygiene factor. This means that it is a dissatisfier rather than a motivator, and that when people get a certain level of salary, once they are used to it they become dissatisfied with it and want more.

Do we work to live?
Many see work as a means to an end-providing just enough pay to “keep them alive and keep a roof over their heads” people in this category are often motivated by intrinsic rewards, such as praise and recognition, rather than extrinsic rewards, such as pay and other associated benefits.